In today's marketplace, businesses are increasingly looking to partner with other businesses to create new external distribution channels to sell, cross-sell, bundle and/or license their products and/or services. Additionally, businesses may use these external distribution channels to increase overall customer recognition. However, enabling the corresponding business partnerships requires exchanging a plethora of business and system related information between the business partners and overcoming differences in the ways each partner uses and transmits the information between companies. Furthermore, a particular business may endeavor to engage multiple business partners and each partnership may have its own unique terms, goals, and requirements.
Various partnership relationship management (PRM) concepts and applications known in the art have been developed to simplify the exchange of information and management of business partnerships. For example, a PRM application hosted by a business, i.e., a “host company,” may give a partner providing an external distribution channel, i.e., a “client company,” access to real-time information concerning the host company's product and/or service offerings, inventory, pricing, shipping availability, etc. Additionally, the host company's PRM application may support profiles specific to each client company that allow information to be tailored to the specific terms of the partnership agreement between the two companies. For example, the PRM application may provide tailored pricing or quantity information based on expected volume to be distributed and/or purchased or based on the priority of that client company to the host company's business objectives. The PRM application may also provide various interfacing and reporting capabilities that may be targeted to a particular client company based on the client company's requirements and/or its particular partnership agreement.
However, existing partnership relationship applications address only established distribution channels. Activating a new distribution channel to be provided by a new or existing business partner is a manually intensive process supported by numerous departments, such as, for example, marketing, finance, legal, procurement, technology, operations, etc. Businesses expend substantial numbers of person-hours acquiring information concerning the business partner and distribution channel characteristics, creating a distribution channel profile, setting up product and/or service pricing and volume specifications, specifying and designing various reports to track distribution channel sales, billing, compensation, etc. Additionally, significant numbers of person-hours are wasted in just seeking and obtaining approval from various business departments throughout the distribution channel activation process.